


oh, we dreamed a life

by 1000_directions



Series: mcu kink bingo [9]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bucky Barnes Recovering, Crying During Sex, Explicit Consent, M/M, Making Love, Protective Clint Barton, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-22
Updated: 2019-04-22
Packaged: 2020-01-23 17:15:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18554218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/1000_directions/pseuds/1000_directions
Summary: Bucky from the past was still solid and unbroken. The hardships of the world sharpened him like a blade, cunning and sly and whole. That Bucky was whole, and Clint fell in love with that man, but the only man left now ishim, here in the present, and he’s just been shattered so many times that he can’t ever promise anyone that his pieces are all back where they’re supposed to be.Clint falls in love with Bucky twice.





	oh, we dreamed a life

**Author's Note:**

> Squares filled:
> 
> mcukinkbingo: Time Travel  
> clintbartonbingo: Didn't Know They Were Dating  
> buckybarnesbingo: Making Love

When a portal opens up in the Avengers common room and sucks a sputtering, cursing Clint into some unknown space and time right before all of their eyes, Bucky’s first thought is a panicked, blinding _Oh shit oh shit oh shit_ , because Clint is _gone_ , and he and Bucky were just starting to maybe _be_ something, and Tony can derisively call it buddyfucking all he wants, but Bucky cares about Clint, and now they have no idea where or when he is, and--

With a sickening lurch of his stomach, a memory resurfaces, and Bucky suddenly knows exactly where Clint went. And it’s a relief to know that Clint is going to be fine, but Bucky starts saying _Oh shit oh shit oh shit_ for an entirely different reason, because oh boy, is Clint going to be mad at him when he gets back.

It’s nearly two weeks before the portal reappears above Bucky’s bed at 3:07 in the morning and spits Clint onto the floor in an undignified heap. Bucky hasn’t slept much since Clint vanished, and the delineation between reality and unreality has been a little fuzzy lately, so Bucky is uncharacteristically slow to react, blinking uncertainly at Clint’s sprawled body, limbs akimbo in an outfit that looks a lot like one Bucky would’ve had back in the forties.

“What the fuck?” Clint mutters from the ground. “Am I back? Is it now?”

“It’s now,” Bucky says cautiously. “Can you hear me? Do you need me to--?”

“I can hear, I can hear,” Clint says. “Kept my damn ears in for three months because I was terrified I might get zapped back here without them, and I wasn’t going to be responsible for twenty-first century Stark-tech falling into the hands of HYDRA and rewriting the whole timeline so I didn’t even get born someday.”

“You were only gone two weeks here,” Bucky says. He turns on the light, and Clint blinks at him grumpily. He has facial hair, which is new. Bucky’s never seen him with more than a light dusting of blond stubble, but now he has a neatly trimmed beard, precise and thick, though Bucky can see a few healing nicks on his neck.

Clint cracks his neck and then somehow flips from his back to a standing position, one of his circus-cum-commando moves that shouldn’t be physically possible, and it usually gets Bucky going to see him pull off physical feats like that, but Clint is glaring and pointing an accusatory finger at him, so...that’s a bit of a mood-killer.

“Are you dating me?” Clint demands. “Are we dating?”

“We’ve never been on a date,” Bucky hedges. He swings his legs around so he’s sitting on the side of the bed, looking up at Clint as he begins to pace.

“I was in the forties!” Clint sputters. “I was with you! In the _forties_!”

“I kind of figured.”

“Do you have _any_ idea what New York was like back then?”

“Yeah, a little bit,” Bucky says, narrowing his eyes.

Clint sighs heavily and stops pacing. He flops down next to Bucky on the bed, and the fight seems to go out of him.

“Did you know this was going to happen?” Clint asks softly. He looks into Bucky’s eyes, and there’s a vulnerability there that Bucky has never seen, and he aches to honor that, to keep Clint safe, to share an intimacy with him that is deeper, different than their physical relationship. “Did you know that I was going to go back in time and fall in love with you?”

“I…. You’re in love with me?” The words are like petals on his tongue, delicate and fragrant, and he’s so scared he’ll say too much and rip them to shreds and lose whatever is happening between them in this perfect, peculiar moment.

“Do you remember it?” Clint asks. He raises a tentative hand towards Bucky, traces his eyebrow with a soothing fingertip. “Do you remember being in love with me, or did HYDRA take that from you?”

“I felt...drawn to you,” Bucky says, combing through decades of fragmented memories as Clint traces a straight line down the bridge of his nose. “When I came to the tower and I met you for the first time. You felt like you were supposed to be mine, like I was supposed to be close to you, but I didn’t know this would happen, Clint. When you left, something resurfaced, but I don’t remember it all the way. I knew where you were, I knew you were with me, but I don’t...I don’t _know_ it the way you know it.”

“Do you want me to tell you?” Clint asks.

Bucky is torn, because he knows that Clint is offering him something he’s wanted, a closeness, a deep connection that he’s craved between the two of them, something he’s sensed was there but hasn’t been able to get his mind entirely around. But he can’t trust someone else’s memories to do the remembering for him. Not anyone, not even Clint.

“Do you...do you want me to show you?” Clint asks hesitantly. “I could touch you like I touched... _you_. It might help you remember. If you wanted. We don’t have to.”

Clint spent _three months_ with Bucky, a lighter, easier Bucky without all the baggage of brainwashing and murder and struggling to regain his autonomy. And his life in the forties wasn’t exactly a cakewalk, Bucky knows that. The world wasn’t all soft and kind to him back then either. But Bucky from the past was still solid and unbroken. The hardships of the world sharpened him like a blade, cunning and sly and whole. That Bucky was whole, and Clint fell in love with that man, but the only man left now is _him_ , here in the present, and he’s just been shattered so many times that he can’t ever promise anyone that his pieces are all back where they’re supposed to be.

“I’m not him,” Bucky says, frustrated. “Fuck, of course I want to be that for you, but he’s gone, Clint. He fell off a fucking mountain and died, and telling me about him isn’t going to change me into him. There’s only me. I’m sorry.”

Clint’s eyes go soft and unfocused, and his voice breaks when he says, “Shit, Bucky. I didn’t…. I don’t love you because you’re him. I fell in love with him because _he’s you_.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Bucky whispers.

“I see all of you now,” Clint says, smiling tentatively. “I _know_ you.”

“That’s not _me_ ,” Bucky says, swallowing hard, feeling weird nerve-pricks between his eyes.

“I see who you were,” Clint says, steadily looking into Bucky’s eyes like he’s seeing all the goddamn way through him, and it’s terrifying. “I see what they took from you, and I see how much you took back, and I see all the other parts of you, all the things about you that you fabricated out of nothing. You’re the strongest fucking person I know, and you don’t…. Listen, you don’t have to love me.”

“Clint.”

“It’s okay,” Clint says, blinking rapidly and looking down at his hands, fingers twisted together in his lap. “You don’t remember, and I’m not going to make you do anything you don’t want to do, and if it makes you uncomfortable I’ll just fuck off and leave you alone.”

“What did you mean, when you said you’d show me?” He _wants_ this with Clint, he wants to be who Clint wants him to be, but he’s not enough, and it’s so fucking obvious and so fucking stupid that they’re even having this conversation, that Bucky is even humoring him this much.

“We touched differently,” Clint says. “When we...when I loved you, I touched you differently. I knew you better and it was just.” He closes his eyes, breathes in and out, and his voice is just a wisp of sound as he says, “It could be so gentle, and so sweet, and you...you called me _sweetheart_ , and I loved you with my hands.”

“I’m not him,” Bucky insists weakly, but the look in Clint’s eyes steals the rest of his protestations.

“I don’t care,” Clint says, and his eyes bore deep down into Bucky, and he bites down on his own lip, and it sparks something inside of Bucky, some little jolt of _something_ , a flicker of a ghost of a memory that he can’t catch or name or even get a good look at. “I’m fucking crazy about you anyway.”

“Then touch me,” Bucky says quietly. “I can’t promise you a damn thing, Clint, but you can touch me as gentle and as sweet as you like.”

“Yeah?” Clint asks softly, and Bucky nods. “You’ve got to tell me if it’s too much, if you want to stop, okay? I don’t want to do anything you don’t want to do.”

And the thing is, Bucky’s over a hundred years old, and his brain went through a goddamn woodchipper and came out the other end in a million billion pieces. And he’s lived so many lives, been so many different guys, good and bad and everything in between, and he gets glimpses and feelings and recollections sometimes, and he’s patchworked a couple parts of his life back together pretty well. But he can’t remember a single damn time that he’s ever had sex with someone who loved him, and he’s not sure he’ll ever have a chance again.

“I trust you,” he says. “I don’t trust me, but I trust you, Clint.”

“I’ll be careful with you,” Clint swears, and Bucky knows he isn’t talking about something physical.

“How do you want me?”

“You’re perfect right there,” Clint murmurs, bringing his hands up to cradle Bucky’s face. “You’re perfect.”

He ducks his head, but he stops a few inches away, hesitating, searching for something in Bucky’s eyes. Bucky cranes his neck, reaching for his mouth, and Clint meets him in the middle, his lips touching Bucky’s so gently that he can barely tell anything is happening. There’s the softness of Clint’s mouth and then just the whisper of his breath, small kisses from one corner of his lips to the other. Clint kisses the bridge of his nose, the slope of his cheekbones, the dimple in his chin, the thinnest skin of his closed eyelids, and Bucky holds still and lets him, shuddering at his unbearable gentleness.

“Love this face,” Clint whispers against his forehead, and Bucky shakily breathes in and out and lets himself be kissed.

When Clint moves lower, starts kissing a path down the side of his neck and over his throat, Bucky raises his hands from where they’ve been awkwardly clenched at his sides, and he slides one hand into Clint’s hair, letting his other palm smooth over Clint’s broad shoulders. He loves Clint’s arms, loves the deceptive compactness of his power, loves to feel those muscles rippling just beneath the surface of his skin.

“You just got back,” Bucky says haltingly, trying to stay tethered to something concrete and true. “Did you-- Are you hungry? Aren’t you tired?”

“Not tired,” Clint murmurs into Bucky’s skin.

He sucks a kiss into the juncture of Bucky’s neck and right shoulder, and Bucky’s head falls to the other side, giving him room to work. Jesus, Clint’s mouth is amazing. Bucky doesn’t know that he deserves this much careful attention, but he’s going to take as much as Clint will give him.

“Shit, sorry,” Clint says, pulling back after a moment. “It’s the middle of the night here. Are _you_ tired?”

“Not tired,” Bucky chokes out. His skin is already screaming for Clint again, hungry and desperate to be handled.

“And you’ll tell me if you want me to stop?” Clint asks, touching the pad of his thumb to Bucky’s lower lip, and Bucky flicks his tongue over the place where he senses the faint echo of Clint’s pulse.

“Don’t stop,” he manages to say. “Please, Clint. Please don’t stop.”

“I won’t, baby,” he says with a small smile, something safe and earnest shining out from his eyes. “I’m gonna take real, real good care of you.”

Bucky nods wildly. He barely understands what’s going on, but he knows he wants it, knows he doesn’t want to lose the thread of whatever they’re crafting. His fingers tighten in Clint’s hair. Whatever’s happening next, he wants to stay right here and be a part of it.

“Do you want to take this off or leave it on?” Clint asks, running a fingertip along the neckline of the sleeveless t-shirt Bucky was sleeping in.

“Off,” Bucky says, and he lets go of Clint to start pulling it up his torso. And then he feels Clint’s hands on him, muffled slightly by the pooling fabric, but the two of them get his top off together, and Bucky feels like his heart is going ten million miles a minute as he lounges back on his elbows and waits.

It’s not like they’ve never fooled around before. Before Clint went time-hopping, they were falling into bed four or five times a week for months. Clint’s body is familiar, and being touched by Clint is familiar, but Christ, it never felt like this before, not a single time.

“Your body is amazing,” Clint breathes. He stretches out next to Bucky and runs an admiring hand over his pecs and his shoulders. Bucky doesn’t _get it_. He’s physically fit, he knows that as an objective fact. But there’s no hiding the fact that he’s got a horrifying HYDRA weapon messily grafted onto his body, and the collection of scars from surgeries and experiments and his own feverish attempts to claw the damn thing off are just the perfect final touch to remind Clint that this is not the same body he fell in love with, not even close. He’s a mockery of who he used to be.

“You don’t have to touch it,” Bucky says, glancing over at his left arm.

“Do you not want me to touch it?” Clint asks carefully.

“Do you _want_ to touch it?” Bucky checks Clint’s face for any sign that he’s teasing or joking; sometimes Clint’s sarcasm is so subtle that Bucky misses it, but he seems guileless right now.

“It’s you,” Clint says softly. “I want to touch every part of you that you’ll let me. But only what you’re okay with.”

“I don’t even want to touch it some days,” Bucky says quietly. “Why would you want to?”

“Can I?” Clint asks, and Bucky doesn’t understand, but Clint can have anything he wants, anything, anything, so he nods shortly.

Clint places his palm in the middle of Bucky’s chest, and he must be able to feel how Bucky’s heart is racing as his hand arcs closer to the seam where his flesh ends and his metal begins. And Clint’s touch is light, but there’s a purposefulness to his movement, and Bucky feels seared at every point of contact.

“Do you feel it?” Clint asks as his thumb skates along the nastiest of his scars.

“Little bit.”

“Does it hurt?”

“Not at all,” Bucky says quietly. “Feels nice.”

Clint smiles and kneels over him, and then both of his hands are exploring Bucky’s arm, creating the shape of his musculature between Clint’s steady palms as he maps out the geography of what Bucky’s body has endured all these years.

“Be careful,” Bucky says, and Clint stops immediately, looking at Bucky’s face. “Don’t want to hurt you,” Bucky clarifies, and Clint smiles crookedly at him.

“You’re not gonna hurt me,” Clint says.

He settles easily across Bucky’s lap, straddling him carefully, and he guides Bucky’s hand right to his face, places it against his cheek and then closes his eyes, like he’s let his guard down completely. Bucky bites his lip and wills himself to relax, not to tense up, not to hurt Clint. And then he lets himself feel the faint pressure of Clint’s skin, the subtle heat of his blood. The hand doesn’t detect too many kinds of data, but it reads that much. And Bucky didn’t know it would, because he’s never tried.

“I’m safe in your hands,” Clint says quietly, opening his eyes and pressing a kiss to Bucky’s palm before placing it gently, reverently back at his side.

God, it’s almost too much to be touched like he’s precious after he’d resigned himself to the idea that no one would ever want to.

“Take this off,” Bucky says hoarsely, tugging at the hem of Clint’s shirt. He needs to touch Clint. To take some of the attention off of himself, and also because he has so much confusing gratitude roiling inside of him that he’s going to explode if he can’t reciprocate in some way.

“Okay,” Clint says. He unbuttons the top three buttons and then pulls the shirt off over his head, throwing it behind himself somewhere on Bucky’s floor. He’s a little skinnier than he was when he left, war rationing tends to do that, but his body is still so strong and sleek and perfect. Bucky runs his fingers along the familiar scar curving up Clint’s torso, diagonally across his left ribcage. Bucky hates that Clint has ever been hurt, but he loves the scars. Reminders that even though he’s been up against some nasty shit, nothing’s been tough enough to take Clint down. Everything Clint has, he earned, and some of those payments are very visible, and Bucky traces each scar he can see until they all blur to nothing.

“Kiss me?” he asks, and as soon as he does, Clint is sinking down onto him, chest to chest, heavy and warm on Bucky’s body. And Clint trails his hands up Bucky’s arms, all the way up to his hands, and he slips his fingers between Bucky’s as he bends down and kisses him a little more insistently than before. Clint kisses him breathless, and he holds Bucky’s hands the whole time.

“You’re so good at that,” Clint murmurs against his lips. “Do you know you kiss the same way you did seventy years ago?”

“Didn’t do a lot of kissing in HYDRA,” Bucky says awkwardly. “Guess the technique didn’t change much before and after.”

“Can’t improve upon perfection,” Clint says, flashing him a grin and going up on his knees a little. “Can you roll over for me?”

“What am I, a dog?” Bucky grumbles playfully as he flips over onto his stomach. “Are you gonna ask me to sit and stay next?”

“I would absolutely like for you to stay,” Clint says, and then he’s kissing a lazy path down Bucky’s spine, his talented mouth wet and warm against Bucky’s skin. Bucky closes his eyes and pillows his head in his arms, and he lets Clint’s mouth lull him to a stillness, a settledness that he hasn’t felt in a long, long time.

And he stays there, still and safe, as Clint carefully finishes undressing him, lavishing adoring kisses on each exposed sliver of flesh. He stays small and settled as Clint painstakingly fingers him open, each slight movement communicating sensory information ( _I am touching you here, you are being touched here by me_ ) at the same time that it tells Bucky something deeper, something personal and startling ( _I am touching you this way because I’m in love with you, I am careful with you because I care for you_ ).

And when Clint finally, carefully pushes into him, Bucky feels the hot breath on the back of his neck, feels the pressure of Clint’s chest pushing him down into the bed, feels Clint’s thighs tucked snugly around his own, feels one of Clint’s hands on his biceps and one on his hip, and he’s surrounded. He’s completely enclosed in Clint’s body, even as he feels the blunt pressure of Clint breaching him. They’re both inside each other, somehow, and Bucky has never felt so loved in his whole, long life.

It’s just small whimpers at first, and he can swallow them down, catch them before Clint notices. But when Clint presses deeper, when Bucky feels the way his own body yields so willingly, greedy for Clint’s careful attention, he lets out a whine that he can’t bite back. And by the time Clint gets a slippery hand around him to give his dick a gentle tug, Bucky’s openly weeping.

Clint notices that, of course.

“Are you okay?” he asks worriedly, halting his movements. “Bucky? Babe? Talk to me. You want me to stop?”

“No,” he cries. “Please, please don’t stop. Oh god, Clint.”

“What’s wrong, baby?” Clint asks so quietly and sweetly that Bucky just starts crying harder.

“You love me so much,” he manages to get out between his sobs. “Why? _Why_? How do I know you won’t stop?”

“I found you twice,” Clint says softly. “Seventy years apart, baby, and I found you twice. Do you think that was an accident?” Bucky feels a warm droplet splash onto his shoulder, and Clint’s voice is thick when he continues. “Do you think I’m ever going to let you go again? I keep finding you.” His lips are soft and wet against Bucky’s shoulder, and every time a tear falls onto Bucky’s skin, he kisses it away. “You’re my destiny, Bucky Barnes. Think maybe I was made just to love you.”

Bucky doesn’t know what to do with that, but when he feels Clint’s hand tighten around his dick again, he thrusts into his grip, and Clint starts moving his hips a moment later, driving deep and purposefully into Bucky. Clint’s hips roll elegantly on top of his own, and his rhythm is exacting but generous, and Bucky squeezes his eyes shut tight and lets the tears fall freely from the corners of his eyes as Clint brings him off. Clint eases him through it, the steady relentless fullness of him driving Bucky right off the edge until he’s coming in Clint’s hand, tears leaking messily down his face.

“I’ve got you, I’ve got you,” Clint keeps murmuring, and Bucky knows, he _knows_. And when Clint comes a minute later, deep inside of Bucky, he thinks _Thank you for finding me even when_ I _can’t find me. Please keep finding me. Don’t let me get lost._

Clint pulls out and eases himself down next to Bucky, draping himself over Bucky’s prone form and kissing the back of his shoulder-blade. Bucky’s sweaty and sticky, and his face feels all weird and stiff from crying, but he doesn’t shove Clint off, finds himself craving the closeness.

“Was that okay?” Clint asks softly.

“We’ve done that before,” Bucky says, and he knows it somewhere deep and true inside of him. He can’t remember it, not quite, but something has clicked into place. He knows now that this is how he and Clint were supposed to be touching each other this whole time.

“We have done that before,” Clint agrees, “but it was better this time. It was the best with you.”

“How could this be best when I’m... _this_?” _This fractured mess that barely remembers you, let alone understands how to have the appropriate feelings that you deserve?_

“You’re my favorite you,” Clint says simply. And it’s so stupid, and it shouldn’t be that easy, but Bucky believes him anyway.

And he wants to try. God, even if it’s reckless and dumb and ill-advised, he wants to try with Clint. He wants to figure out who they are to each other, who they could be if they keep trying, the two of them, together.

Bucky doesn’t love him yet, but…

They have time.

**Author's Note:**

> [tumblr post](http://1000-directions.tumblr.com/post/184354988349/title-oh-we-dreamed-a-life-link-ao3-square)


End file.
